Free HMRC workshops

Few people seem to know that HM Revenue & Customs offer free workshops around the UK on various subjects to do with tax, employment and other money matters. Here's a list of what they offer. From personal experience I can say that they're very good! For example, those who are self-employed and about to do self-assessment tax returns might benefit from checking out the relevant workshop before the deadline gets too close!

Tags: money, tax

Remote control electronic scoreboard

Presenting a new piece of software - this time for Mac users! Scorer is an electronic scoreboard that can be controlled via the Apple Remote. Take your laptop to your next volleyball, basketball, table tennis, badminton game that you're playing in and let this keep the score for you. [Download]

Related: Apple, Mac, Scorer, sport

T Mobile G1 and Android market

Details of Google's answer to Apple's iPhone, the G1, are emerging. Sounds like its camera will be 3MP (that's 50% more) and will also include a compass. Nothing to rave about yet but the price sounds like it could be reasonable too at around $200. No decision's been made yet but I'm glad I resisted and didn't buy the iPhone the other day! Android market will also surely be more open than the App Store... The manufacturers are HTC, a Taiwanese company - another thing in their favour!

See also: Google Android, G1, Apple iPhone, HTC

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Remove vocals from songs

"Only in Dreams" by Weezer is a terrific song, until about 52 seconds into it when the vocals come in. Unfortunately acoustic versions only seem to exist as low quality YouTube videos. However, the good news is that there's some free software called Wavosaur that will take an mp3 and do the required filtering. It's not perfect - some bass is lost and muted voices can still be heard, but at least karaoke fans can now rejoice!

Tags: music, mp3

Silent Disco

The Fun Lovin' Criminals played live at Koko in Camden last night to an audience of wireless-headphone-wearing fans and it was a lot of fun! Clearly it's the future. The neighbours can't complain, you can decide if you want to go deaf and you can actually talk to people. There were a couple of BBC camera crews hovering about so it may be (or already have been) on TV.

Google Chrome

It's an internet browser. It's fast. It's made by Google. So great, why don't we all start using it? Well, Mac OS X users haven't got a version made for them yet and fans of the Google Toolbar won't switch because it simply isn't there in Chrome... an obvious omission!

Google Newspaper

Checking Google's robots.txt file, the file that tells other search engines what part of a website they can or cannot index, sometimes throws up interesting hints as to what might be coming next. Today a new entry has appeared under "newspaper". Guess it makes sense to want to start cataloguing the printed press...

Tags: Google, robots

Mapping free wireless internet hotspots

A new website is now available for those who want to find free wifi hotspots for surfing the internet on a laptop when away from home.

The site's called Wifi-o-maniac and uses Google Maps to chart hotspot locations. You can even add your own that are not already in the database.

Related: wireless internet, hotspot, mashup

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